1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a flying vehicle simulation system for simulating maneuvering operations of flying vehicles, such as aircraft and space navigation vehicles including artificial satellites.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
With the growing demand for communications in the field of present-day space development, a plurality of space navigation vehicles, such as geostationary satellites and artificial satellites under a rendezvous maneuvering operation employ a series of various maneuvering operations, such as their own independent orbit-and-attitude control, while maintaining a specific relation among them.
For future space development, there is an urgent need to develop a flying vehicle simulation system for experimentally simulating the maneuvering operations of a plurality of space navigation vehicles so as to achieve multi-function and very accurate maneuvering operations of these space navigation vehicles. From the standpoint of stable and safe operation, it is necessary to design the vehicle simulation system such that it can simulate the maneuvering operations of a plurality of space navigation vehicles, while maintaining their relative relation, once their operation conditions have been satisfied.
If the aforementioned simulation system is so configured that it can independently simulate the maneuvering operations of these space navigation vehicles one at a time, then their maneuvering operation conditions, such as their circumstances and maneuvering operation information, are different from vehicle to vehicle and it is also difficult to define the maneuvering operation simulation of the respective space navigation vehicles in a sequential time division fashion. Therefore, a problem arises therefrom because an enormous amount of storage information must correspond to the maneuvering operation conditions of the respective space navigation vehicles. For this reason, the simulation system needs a very large capacity data base for storing such an enormous amount of storage information and the system is therefore very cumbersome to operate.
As a means for realizing a high degree of maneuvering operation simulation, it is possible for a user (operator) to perform a system modification in accordance with the states of maneuvering operations. This presents problems, such as the maintaining of information for performing the system modification, verification of the system accompanied by its modification and cumbersome operations of a new system, that is, problems corresponding to the states of maneuvering operations each time.
Such a situation is also true of the case where any specific maneuvering operation is simulated using the guidance of, for example, a plurality of aircraft one at a time.
The object of the present invention is to provide a flying vehicle simulation system which is simpler in configuration and operation and can achieve a high degree of maneuvering operation simulation.